Twelve ways to push back

Surprising lessons from my own slow rebellion

(This voiceover is an audio version of the newsletter below. As always, it’s unedited. If you like or need to listen to these posts I hope you enjoy it!)

Image via Unsplash

When I started this term of writing about rebellion, I began with a theory and a question:

Rebellion, to me, is deciding what you stand for and standing by it. Living your values in the face of questioning or confusion or derision, even if, or especially if, those values run counter to the norm.

And what I’m really excited to explore is what happens when we do?

And while that was a clear and exciting place to start, I was also a bit scared:

“I desire ways to live more intentionally, but I fear the toll it can take.”

Over the past couple of weeks, as I’ve tried to pull on the threads of what I’ve learnt, I’ve found myself feeling vaguely bad about what forms my rebellion has taken. It didn’t feel enough. And, despite my words to the contrary, I had expected it to look a certain way. I think I’d hoped to unlock the placard-waving, world-shaking, weirdo-and-she-knows-it version of myself who would simultaneously tackle the big, global issues while living wholly against the grain in my own life.

Suffice to say, that didn’t happen.

I initially put it down to that fear holding me back, making me afraid to give too much, but now I see that I just don’t have that kind of capacity. I don’t think anyone does, or at least not for very long.

No one I know is out there saving the planet and volunteering and working full-time and writing a world-changing book and hosting community events and living zero-waste and being home when their kids get off the bus and feeling completely at ease in their bodies and unlearning intergenerational beliefs and, and, and… you get the picture.

We don’t have the time, capacity or energy to do it all. We never have and we never will. Not all at once.

But that’s not to let us off the hook. I’m not about to slide into nihilism here. I believe we can all effect change in our own lives and/or the world around us. We just need to decide what issues are important to us right now, how we want them to change, and what it looks like to show up for them, at this stage of life, with all its unique complexities and challenges.

Rebellion can be outward-facing — the things we often think of as revolutionary, like campaigning, protesting, speaking truth to power, or visibly operating outside the norm and encouraging others to join us. But it can also be a quieter, personal kind of pushing back. Questioning our beliefs and actions, the conversations we have with ourselves and our closest people, how we choose to see ourselves in the world, and our priorities as a family unit can all be their own rebellions. They all involve us shaking the foundation of the status quo, of what is, and questioning whether it needs to change.

As if to prove to me that internal and external rebellions really are just different sides of the same coin, I’ve found that the quieter, personal rebellions I’ve waged in recent months (pushing back on my beliefs about body image, self-worth, people-pleasing, rest, and acceptance), the more space I seem to find for external forms of rebellion.

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

I realise now that so much of this is about values. Working out what it is I value right now, the multitude of ways those values can show up in my life, and the many different ways I can stand in them. And I see that my efforts to go against the grain have centred around a few causes that are important to me, at this point in my life:

• Education — more specifically, public education, helping people value it, helping our kids develop critical thinking skills within it and supporting educators

• Self-compassion — developing it, maintaining it, investigating why I do or don’t have it, learning how to create more of it and seeing where that leads

• Changing views (my own and others’) around aging, body image and the way we see ourselves taking up space in the world

• Experiencing joy in the face of pain and uncertainty — both personal and global

It’s been helpful for me to break these small acts of rebellion down into internal and external efforts, but it could be just as helpful to think personal vs collective, home-based vs in-the-world, or whatever comparison works for you.

Outwardly, I’ve:

• Sent emails to our local members of parliament about an issue at our kids’ school

• Had conversations about this same issue with friends and family

• Smiled at strangers — pushing back against the isolation that not only seems widespread but almost expected. Pushing back against the belief that our communities are devoid of these kinds of interactions

• Volunteered at the kids’ school. Now that my health is slightly more stable, I feel like I’m able to get involved in new ways. Instead of just talking about it or giving in to the voice asking me what I have to offer, I’ve tried just putting my hand up for things. If privilege is anything, it’s opportunity, and I have the opportunity to help, so I’m choosing to use it

• I’ve sung out loud, laughed with my whole body, clapped and cheered and been genuinely enthusiastic about things. There are so many (too many) reasons to feel despair in the world right now. Finding and embracing and exhibiting joy in spite of it is one of the most rebellious things we can do.

• Complimented people. I’ve tried to pass on kindness and appreciation to people around me. If the status quo is an increasingly distracted, digital, disconnected existence, I’m trying to be the opposite.

While internally, I’ve:

• Actively said thank you to my body for what she’s done, how she carries me, where we’ve gone and the things we’ve achieved.

• Continued to wash my face with honey and moisturise with jojoba oil, as my one-woman campaign against the marketing BS women are served about their skin — namely, that it needs to be blemish-free, wrinkle-free, texture-free in order to be healthy/beautiful. Neither honey nor jojoba oil make my skin “better”, but they don’t make it worse either which tells me how useful the expensive products I used to use were. (Not very). Every time I catch a glimpse of my face, with its fine lines and visible pores and feel vaguely bad about being human, I remind myself that my skin is doing a fantastic job of holding my face together.

• Played music loud in the car and sung my guts out. This is joy, this is finding my voice, this is play and all of those things ripple out into my life in a multitude of rebellious ways.

• Truly listened rather than racing to lecture or solve

• Pushed back against stories in my head. Just because I’m thinking it doesn’t mean it’s true

• Chose my well-being over productivity again and again. Putting myself to bed when I was unwell, dropping balls when the family got sick, letting things be good enough so I could prioritise rest. We cannot do everything, and recognising this, tilting and wobbling as needed, is freeing and pushes back against the internalised message that if only I tried harder, I’d be able to do it all. No-one can, and the sooner we stop expecting ourselves to and find space for grace, the better for everyone.

Funnily enough though, the biggest example I’ve had of rebellious living this term has been radical, unequivocal acceptance.

In a world that profits from our own self-loathing and forges destructively ahead when we’re too overwhelmed by problems to even begin to find solutions, what could be more rebellious than accepting what is and embracing it — flaws, weaknesses, challenges and all?  

To do so is to create a foundation of understanding — where we stand right now, where we can begin from, and what obstacles are in our way — rather than a long list of things we wish were true. As I’ve learned to let go of the what-ifs and if-onlys, I’ve freed up an astonishing amount of space in my mind. And that extra space? I can use it however I want.

And that’s rebellion, baby. Big and small, internal and outward-facing — it all counts.

It’s been a really interesting term, and I’m so glad you’ve come along with me. I’m curious to know whether you’ve experienced any of your own rebellions over the past few months. Have you learnt things about yourself? Have you broken down walls or pushed back against the status quo in any way? How did it make you feel?

Now, for our next topic!

As always, it will be applied as generously and as softly as possible so we can explore it through the lens of slow living, but next term, I want to write about consumption.

The things, information, stories, expectations, options, stuff, trends and foods we consume, how they shape us, how they impact the world, and how viewing consumption through that lens of slow living might help us to rethink the inputs into our lives and the effect they each have.

I’m excited to dive in in a couple of weeks and would love to know if you have any requests for specific topics within that subject. Please let me know!

As for the rest of July, I’ll be taking my usual two-week break for the kids’ school holidays, starting tomorrow, but I do have a few pre-scheduled letters ready to come out:

• Sunday July 7: A new round of the 1% experiment begins

• Thursday 18 July: A Tortoise plodcast episode, all about finding (and abandoning) balance

• Sunday 21^st July: Our second Rituals Mini-workshop will hit the inboxes of paying supporters. And this one is all about the ritual of unplugging. If you’d like to know more about these monthly workshops, you can get a sneak peek of our first one here.

Aside from that, I’ll be taking some deep-winter time to rest, cook lots of soups, take a few chilly bushwalks, probably paint the kids’ bedrooms and hopefully get my hands back in the soil.

Thank you, as always, for being here, for being part of The Tortoise community, and for making it the loveliest corner of the internet.

Take the very best of care, and I will see you soon.
Brooke xx